Car shoppers are 5.3 times more likely to convert to a lead when dealerships have positive, consumer-written online reviews. This conclusion is the result of a research study released by DealerRater and Dataium. Let's take a look at the details from their joint press release...

DealerRater and Dataium:

Car Shoppers 5.3 Times More Likely to Convert to a Lead When Dealers Have Consumer-Written Online Reviews

Research Study Analyzes the Effects of Online Dealer Reviews on Automotive Shoppers

According to a newly released automotive marketing research study, Positive online reviews that provide employee-specific information are effective at driving website traffic that conerts to sales and service leads for car dealers. The automotive marketing research study is the result of a joint effort between DealerRater, the car dealer review website publisher and Dataium, the largest online data aggregation provider specializing in automotive shopper behavior.

The study revealed that DealerRater.com users were 90 percent more likely to visit a dealer website and 5.3 times more likely to convert to a lead when that dealer had a positive overall rating of 3.5 stars or higher. Users reacted even stronger to review profiles that provided expanded information through DealerRater’s Certified Dealer Program. In particular, users were 12.1 times more likely to submit a lead to dealers that featured employee pages on their DealerRater review profiles. Employee pages, available to participants in DealerRater’s Certified Dealer Program, allow a dealer’s customers to write reviews for individual dealer employees and feature specific information on the individual employee, such as an employee bio, photo and video greeting.

“The study validates what we’ve advised dealers on for years. Dealer reviews have a clear impact on the behavior of today’s auto shoppers. And the fact that auto shoppers are more engaged with the employee pages available from Certified Dealer profiles reveals that consumers are looking for more transparency as they research dealers,” --Gary Tucker, chief executive officer of DealerRater

Gary Tucker went on to state that:

“When comparing multiple car dealerships, they’re looking for detailed reviews that provide a clear idea of what to expect from the car buying process.”

The study further illustrates the high value generated by DealerRater’s Certified Dealer Program, finding that participating dealers were able to attract, engage and convert more car shoppers into leads than non-certified dealers. DealerRater users were 50 percent more likely to visit a Certified Dealer website, as well as spend 80 percent more time on-site, than a non-certified dealer website. Moreover, Certified Dealers showed an 8.8 times higher lead conversion for new vehicles and a 10.8 times higher lead conversion for used vehicles than non-certified dealers.

“Online reviews have already helped consumers in the car buying process, but now we’re looking at the other side of the relationship by showing how dealers can benefit from reviews... The numbers speak for themselves – dealers that provide great customer service are receiving positive online reviews that, in turn, attract and convert more shoppers.” --Eric Brown, chief development officer of Dataium

The findings were corroborated by John Osinga, IT/Web manager of London City Chrysler, a DealerRater Certified Dealer located in London, Ontario.

“We have focused heavily on leveraging DealerRater reviews over the years and it has paid off... We are seeing more referral website traffic now than we ever have before thanks to our online reviews. In addition, visitors are spending more time and viewing more pages on our site.”--John Osinga, IT/Web Manager at London City Chrysler

The research study cited by the Dataium/DealerRater joint press release is based on Dataium’s comparative analysis of dealership website traffic and DealerRater review profiles for more than 1,000 dealers. Dealers interested in learning more about the study or how an online reputation can be leveraged to drive sales can visit www.dealerrater.com/dealer.aspx.

About Dataium

Dataium is the largest aggregator of online automotive shopping behavior. The company collects, analyzes, and indexes billions of online automotive shopping events from millions of active auto shoppers monthly, and supports cutting-edge data collection, analysis, proprietary research and reporting technology. For more information, visit www.dataium.com, email: info@dataium.com or call 877.896.3282.

About DealerRater

DealerRater was founded in 2002 as the first car dealer review website worldwide. DealerRater is the world’s #1 online resource for anyone seeking trusted third-party information on automobile dealerships. DealerRater features nearly 41,000 U.S. and Canadian car dealers, more than 1.4 million consumer reviews and over 1 million cars for sale. DealerRater attracts more than 10 million consumers every year who visit the site to search for car dealerships, read reviews, write their own descriptive reviews, and find car deals – all for free.

In addition, DealerRater offers qualified car dealers a Certified Dealer Program as a reputation management tool to help them grow their online presence and achieve higher SEO rankings across the Web. Today, more than 5,100 dealers are members of the award-winning DealerRater® Certified Dealer Program. DealerRater is proud to have earned the #137 position on the 2012 Inc. 500 list, an exclusive ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States. DealerRater was also recently awarded a Technology Leadership Award from Dealer Marketing Magazine. For more information, visit www.DealerRater.com or call 800-266-9455.

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At Manny and Cherie, while working at http://www.cochran.com, we had a very hard time getting authentic, customer reviews from showrooms to review sites. I created a workaround, in the form of UltraSurf and things went smoothly. I believe they are still using the technique on their iPad kiosks. Happy Days! :-)

Dealers that are still reading this comment thread, and I know you're dwindling in number at this point, any review site that cares about the origination point of a review is NOT relying solely on an IP address to filter content.

If you want to collect in the showroom Ralph has pointed you to sites that allow you to do so, if you want to collect reviews on sites that forbid collecting in the showroom ie Google, Yelp, DealerRater, please don't believe that a free program and a willingness to ignore their TOU is a long term strategy.

BTW, I'm not condoning using UltraSurf illegally (fake accounts and reviews). As long as you keep them truly unique per customer, you should be fine. I don't see anything wrong with an IP bouncing tool. It's really the only way they can stop you from posting multiple times from the same spot.

Install UltraSurf on any internal machine and it gives you the option to choose an anonymous IP address. UltraSurf is a tool that will help you browse the internet anonymously, no one will know from where you are connecting to the network or who you are. Unlike other similar tools, UltraSurf is very easy to use and, in addition to hiding your IP, it clears your history and cookies.

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